RISK ASSESSMENT
1
A. Definition of Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is a forensic psychologist activity carried out so that legal policy
steps are carried out in accordance with expectations so that in the judicial process, risk
assessment is very important for law enforcement in determining case decisions. Risk
assessment is the process of estimating the likelihood of violations that often affect and
is critical in various relationships in the criminal justice and forensic mental health
systems. Risk assessment is a systematic method that considers the acceptance of risky
legal activities. Forensic risk assessment is the calculation of the likelihood that
antisocial or criminal behavior, violence, or sexual crimes.
The difference between risk management and risk assessment is:
1. Risk assessment has the purpose of analyzing the possibility of someone
becoming a perpetrator of crime, while risk management has a purpose to
lower the likelihood of aggression occurring.
2. Risk assessment has static and dynamic risks, while risk management focuses
more on dynamic things to lowers the likelihood of a crime occurring.
3. When viewed from control activities after assessment, in risk assessment, the
perpetrator usually does not apply control after he was acquitted. Meanwhile,
with risk management, control activities are imposed after the perpetrator is
released from punishment to review the progress of the perpetrator when the
perpetrator has returned to society.
4. Risk assessment has a single administrative system, in contrast to risk
management which has a dual administration system.
B. Risk Assessment Function
The Risk Assessment functions are:
1. Assess the various types of disasters that may occur and the consequences that will
be caused (irregularities in the legal process).
2. Find out how the organization knows (enforce the law).
3. Drafting/creating a healthy and comfortable environment (fair legal process).
2
C. Approach in Risk Assessment
Crighton and Towl (2015) stated that there are 3 approaches commonly used in
risk assessment, namely:
1. The result that appears is a probability.
This approach is an approach that is closely related to the general statistical
paradigm, for example such as the result of throwing dice and coins. This
approach is one of the conventional approaches in predicting a risk assessment
outcome.
2. The probability of future outcomes is the result of a sample of past events.
This is an approach that includes such things as actuarial estimates based on
population. In this approach, generally the probability outcomes in the past are not
well known, but can be estimated based on examples of what happened from
similar populations. The risks referred to in this case are individual cases based on
data drawn from seemingly similar populations. If the population is chosen well
then they will predict outcomes at a better rate than the odds.
3. Estimates of future possibilities based on experience, knowledge, and attention
that can be applied to context in question.
This approach is a combination of the previous two approaches by adding
additional information to obtain data accuracy. This approach is a combination of
actuarial assessment with a structured clinical approach with the hope of being
able to improve the accuracy of assessment predictions. The ideal form of risk
assessment also involves a number of methodological principles, namely:
- Attempts to properly name the hazard being assessed
- Attempts to determine possible outcomes that arise
- Attempts to assess the probability of a specific outcome
- Attempts to assess the severity specifically
D. Duties of a Forensic Psychologist
The scope of work and activities carried out by psychologists is quite wide and
diverse. With regard to the breadth and variety of coverage and duties of
3
psychologists, forensics, then Bartol and Bartol (2011) disclose the specialization or
division of divisions in the practice of forensic psychology as follows:
1. Forensic Psychologist as Clinician
Clinical forensic psychologist is one of the specialties within the field of
forensic psychology. As a clinician, forensic psychologists with this
specialization emphasize assessment activities and psychological intervention
to each party who intersects with the legal process.
2. Forensic Psychologist as Researcher
Forensic psychologists who are in charge of researching things that occur are
commonly referred to as experimental forensic psychologists. The forensic
psychologist with this division emphasizes his activity on research on human
behavior related to the prevailing legal system. The following are some of the
activities that forensic psychologists usually do in this specialty.
3. Forensic Psychologist as Legal Expert
Forensic psychologists who are also legal experts are a specialty that is quite
rarely encountered. This forensic psychologist is tasked with analyzing a rule
that applies and is even responsible for designing regulations that are closely
related to psychology and mental health.
E. Examples of Assessment Steps
1. Discussion with investigators about the anatomy of the case and deepening the
profile of the victim and the environment of residence.
2. Plan psychological assessments of people near the victim (interviews,
observations, or administration of test instruments).
3. Detect potential and psychological conditions in general (personality and other
psychological conditions especially psychopathological indications).
F. Types of Risk Assessment
Based on Huss (2014), there are three main types of risk assessment, namely
Clinical Risk Assessment (CRA), Actuarial Risk Assessment Instruments (ARAI),
Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ).
4
1. Clinical Risk Assessment (CRA)
A type of risk assessment that uses the opinions of professionals in the
clinical field as measurement considerations. Here, professionals give their
opinions based on what they learned at the level of education and
professional experience. This type of assessment is subjective and informal
and the provision of advice is not based on statistical data calculations. In
addition, early in development, many studies showed clinical assessment
inaccuracies. However, based on recent research, this type of assessment is
beginning to show its accuracy. If in Cocozza and Steadman's research (in
Huss, 2014) CRA only shows an accuracy rate of 20%-35%, Monahan (in
Huss, 2014) explains that the accuracy rate of CRA is now more than 50%.
In addition, this type of assessment can also be used to improve the
accuracy of the results of actuarial type assessment instruments. Therefore,
CRA is still often used for risk assessment to this day.
2. ARAI
It has a measuring instrument called Classification of Violence Risk
(COVR) with an Iterative Classification Tree (ICT) approach. The ICT
approach focuses on interactive and contingency models to measure the
level of risk of criminals to individuals.
3. Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ)
One instrument is called Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-20
(HCR-20). This risk assessment has a measurement focus that emphasizes
the individual's past experience and its implications for a person's clinical
condition. Here, instruments with an SPJ approach such as HCR-20 use
measuring items like COVR but the assessment results are not raw taken
from the total HCR-20 score but are filtered again with the views of clinical
experts.
5
